


Aftertaste

by madeinessos



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cunnilingus, F/M, King Killmonger, Older Woman/Younger Man, Pseudo-Incest, because it's all about the author's fave things mixed to make a trash cake, bits of headcanons about erik's parents
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-26 23:01:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15011318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madeinessos/pseuds/madeinessos
Summary: Erik has the dowager queen on the palm of his hand and between his jaws. He doesn't need any of the Wakandans' approval, least of all hers.





	Aftertaste

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of Thursdays ago I told the good sis BabaTunji: "I want AO3 to spit out Erik/Ramonda." And then it struck me that I AM also AO3, so here I sidle in bearing....this. (climbs back into rubbish bin)

Erik pauses between the dowager queen’s thighs. “Think you can raise that a bit more, Auntie?”

They both glance at her nightgown. It’s rucked up around the dowager queen’s hips, a heap of cotton, bottle green and liquid-looking. Erik can only guess at the thread count. Maybe it can even slip through his fingers, like all things infuriating. Erik hasn’t found out yet, though. He hasn’t touched it. 

He repeats himself. Word for deliberate word.

When the dowager queen Ramonda raises only an unimpressed brow at him, and nothing else, Erik feels a corner of his lips tip up.

He likes being reminded of the fact that she’s no longer the queen mother. Now that Erik is king, she’s just the dowager queen. Bit of a step down for her, maybe, but hardly the worst that has ever happened to anyone in this damn family.

Another thing that Erik likes is calling her Auntie and hearing that faintest of hitches in her breathing. Maybe irritation. Maybe something else. Still, he likes that because of the herb he can hear it.

Erik smiles at the sound of it now.

He hears the soft wetness of her swallowing.

Then, for a while, the dowager queen just holds Erik’s gaze with her own. 

That’s okay. Erik knows how to wait. Half his life so far has been about productive waiting. So he sits up. Makes himself comfortable over here with his rumpled sheets and the dowager queen’s legs. They still have an hour before sunrise. With his left hand still splayed on her inner thigh, Erik studies the sharp darkness of the dowager queen Ramonda’s eyes. He thinks of all the things she must know. He thinks of what she knows of Baba’s country that Erik himself has yet to see.

He starts sorting through their conversations this past couple of weeks.

Erik has noted the way the dowager queen’s gaze often squints at him, as though searching for something. The way it then slips through him, as though choosing to see something else.

She’s doing it now, the squinting.

Maybe the dowager queen is wondering if, this time, Erik would not stop just before she comes.

Or maybe it’s something else. 

He keeps going through their conversations.

“I am still surprised,” the dowager queen suddenly says, in Xhosa.

Erik waits for her to continue. The dowager queen always speaks to him in Xhosa as though to keep him at a distance. It reminds him of his first day in Wakanda, in the throne room challenging her son, how she kept pushing her son to send Erik away. And how she hissed out that Erik has no rights here.

Slowly, Erik scratches up her thigh. A softness away from clawing.

“Yeah, Auntie?” he prompts her. And she better hurry; Erik will stop whatever he’s doing, even getting his life to eating pussy, to watch the sun rise. “Surprised about what?”

He likes that the dowager queen speaks to him in Xhosa, anyway. That’s all right. Erik knows that his spoken Xhosa could use some polishing.

And that no-rights-here shit isn’t the most infuriating thing the dowager queen has done. No. No, it’s her antics in the Warrior Falls, the moment Erik became king, which enabled the princess to slip through his fingers.

The dowager queen props up her head with one hand. Her gaze turns assessing. Almost scornful. “That you know how to do pleasant things with that mouth.”

With her other hand, she briskly pulls up her nightgown to her waist. Then the dowager queen raises both brows at him, with a kind of unruffled, untouchable arrogance, as if to say: _Well? Get on with it._ As if to say that she’s only passing her time with him.

In a way, so is he.

Erik chuckles. “Auntie,” he says, breathing in another soft stutter in her breathing and giving her thigh a goading pat, “I’ve got a whole playbook with this mouth.”

*

They started speaking to each other two Wednesdays ago.

The dowager queen said, “Coffee is served with fresh fruit _after_ the main course.”

Erik looked up from his second cup for the main course and said, “You know, Wednesday’s usually the dullest day of the week.”

The gentle clinks of cutlery against porcelain stopped. Some of the councilors glanced between Erik and the dowager queen. Others were suddenly engrossed with their napkins. From the other side of the dining table, General Okoye was peering at Erik’s coffee cup with too-alert eyes.

Beside him, the dowager queen was swathed in grey silks and thick disapproval. 

He let out a little laugh.

Yeah he always made them eat with him. All of them served from the same pots and platters, with the same ladles and tongs, under the watchful eyes of the Dora Milaje. All of Erik’s eating things inspected by both himself and General Okoye. 

They would all go down with him if they even attempted to fucking poison him.

“Nothing ever happens on a Wednesday,” Erik said, conversationally. Well except for that one time in 2011 when he had successfully completed a mission in Lebanon. But that had been a non-event: Erik was always successful in missions. “Long past Monday,” he went on. “Too far off from Friday and the weekend.”

The dowager queen ignored him. She was cutting her lamb in deft, efficient motions. 

“Unless even Wednesdays are different around here,” Erik said.

She looked at him. 

The dowager queen had been in mourning this past couple of days. Brooding in dishwater-grey silks, all of her hair tucked inside plain grey hats. But now she looked right at him. 

The stained vibranium windows muted the early afternoon sun, turning it soft and airy in the high-ceilinged dining room.

They didn’t mute the beginnings of mockery on her imperious face.

“Yes,” the dowager queen told Erik. “Yes. On Wednesdays, I used to visit Shuri in her laboratory.”

Under the table, Erik clenched his fist.

He kept his face mild. He fought to keep his breathing even. He was fucking furious.

So fucking furious he could turn on the suit right fucking now and rip this vibranium table into fucking shreds. Acid was burning through him.

He glanced at the councilor on his other side. Not engrossed with a napkin like it’s the fucking underground map.

“W’Kabi. Tell us about your mission.”

The man gave a small nod, posture just as attentive as General Okoye’s, but with eyes with a stealthy kind of alertness.

“It’s going well, my king,” said W’Kabi. “I have guards stationed at all district borders. My units narrowed it down to two points. One where the princess and the other runaways appear to have considered splitting up. And one where they are most likely headed.”

Erik nodded. Progress reports usually soothed him.

The dowager queen calmly sipped at her wine.

It was fucking infuriating. And impressive.

“Rest assured, my king, we will bring the Princess Shuri safely home,” finished W’Kabi.

“Very good.”

Yeah, Erik could multitask. 

W’Kabi was more familiar with Wakanda than he was, as of this moment. Erik could deal with the plan for the outside just fine.

He’d been working for twenty years for this. Erik wouldn’t tolerate incompetence. He never had.

The dowager queen finished her wine with a final calm sip. 

*

“Can you recommend a tailor, Auntie?” Erik said the next day.

The dowager queen paused. She had been nudging around the dark green onugbu leaves in her soup. “I beg your pardon?” Her tone was tight.

Erik slightly raised both of his arms sideways. He was wearing a navy blue piece from his cousin’s wardrobe. Amazing textile, golden embroidery all over the wrists, and gleaming golden buttons. That was the best, the buttons. Erik had done only the lower half of them.

“I can’t keep wearing your son’s clothes.”

W’Kabi twitched. He quickly raised his napkin, dabbing at his mouth and probably hoping that Erik was idiot enough not to have noticed.

The dowager queen was glaring at the Panther necklace. She glared down the row of unclasped buttons, all over Erik’s scars.

He kept his eyes on her face.

It surprised Erik to know that the dowager queen Ramonda had several tells: a twitch of her left eyebrow, a flaring of nostrils, a twisting of her lips, eyes glinting with expressiveness. He had expected the immediate mask of a courtier and the born evenness of a politician.

“We have a tailor in the palace,” the dowager queen said. She made a curt gesture to a footman. Her crystal cup was promptly refilled with wine.

General Okoye was watching Erik’s cup of Coke.

The dowager queen snapped back to calmness, like yesterday. “Be sure to inform the tailor of your distaste for buttons.”

*

Saturday, Erik mused out loud, “Didn’t expect old Uncle James to have done research on the herb.”

It was overcast and drizzling outside. The dining room was brighter than usual. 

Erik added, “Zuri.”

“Ah, yes.” W’Kabi was nodding. “Zuri.”

“One moment you knew him as that cool uncle who’s crazy about Stevie Wonder and Grace Jones. The next, he’s written extensive research on the herb.”

He was watching their faces: the councilors’ and the dowager queen’s. Erik liked studying people’s faces. The ripples. The tautness. What they knew they were showing him. What they didn’t know he had spied and snatched from them.

The dowager queen had been distraught when Uncle James toppled to his death.

She was calm now, eating her rice in small scoops.

And Erik thought: _Oh okay._

*

Not the princess in hiding. 

Not the king thrown off the Falls. 

Not Uncle James in the dirt.

All right, then.

*

The following Wednesday, Erik was already wearing his own new robes. Black and gold. Right fit across the shoulders and around his upper arms. Tasteful peep at his Panther necklace.

All through lunch the councilors kept remarking on the tailor’s skill and Erik’s taste.

Erik poured himself some coffee. Last night he’d finished reading Uncle James’ journal article on whether the herb – besides granting strength, speed, and instincts – could have healing properties. 

“So I was thinking,” Erik was telling General Okoye, “if you could rec me some works on Wakanda’s military history. Nothing extensive, just jumping off points. What _you_ think to be essentials, General.”

General Okoye looked a bit startled to be asked. “My king. Of course.” 

She’d always had the most open face.

“Of course,” said General Okoye. “Queen Afamefuna’s 1694 campaign is an excellent place to start. I recommend the edition by General Mariama of the Dora Milaje, it has annotations by the queen herself. In addition to being a firsthand account. And also the edition by Ireri of the Border Tribe.”

Erik tapped his fingers on the table. “Yeah, I’ve heard of that campaign from my father onc –”

A scrape. 

The dowager queen’s knife had slipped.

“– once or twice,” Erik continued, as though he didn’t really care. “My father said –” in his diaries – “that that was the closest Wakanda’s ever come to a united five tribes.”

“Indeed, my king,” agreed General Okoye.

“Prince N’Jobu was correct, my king,” added W’Kabi. With a nod for both Erik and General Okoye.

Which was a bit unnecessary, but all right, man.

Erik leaned back on his chair. He let himself smile. General Okoye blinked.

“Well I guess I’ll start with that,” he said, widening his smile for the other blinking councilors. He tapped his fingers, lightly, beside his coffee cup.

When he looked away from whatever was going on with W’Kabi and General Okoye, Erik met the dowager queen’s eyes.

She was squinting at him.

Erik kept the smile on his face. “You have other suggestions, Auntie?”

The dowager queen slid her eyes away. There was a hitch in her breathing, a whispery ripple on the dishwater-grey silk of her bodice. “He always did love to read,” was what she said. “Prince N’Jobu.”

She reached for her knife again. The dowager queen’s grip was slightly, slightly, slightly trembling.

_Oh okay._

Erik drank his coffee, and thought. 

*

The next day coffee was served with fresh fruit after the main course, as per Erik’s instructions. 

“Auntie,” he said, “I didn’t know you were familiar with my father.”

The dowager queen was scooping out a sliver of mango. She took her time. “I was. Perhaps.”

“Really.”

Another neat golden sliver. “He always had a book with him.”

Erik waited for her to continue. 

He picked up his own fruit spoon. Silver. Could’ve paid for an entire semester’s tuition.

“The library,” the dowager queen finally said. “He mentioned he will read it all.” Another carefully neat golden sliver. 

“Yeah, Baba taught me to read.” Erik languidly licked the mango from his spoon. “I read a lot. Already finished Uncle James’ works and the General’s recs here.”

There was a brief, breathless pause. A whispery ripple of dishwater-grey silks.

“We should have another batch ordered,” the dowager queen told the councilors. “This mango is impeccably sweet.”

Around his spoon, thick with sweetness from the fruit, Erik could feel a corner of his lips tip up.

*

**(1/2)**


End file.
